Welcome to the Sheriff's Corner!

The Sheriff's Corner will be a blog comprised of weekly articles covering topics relevant to the Carbon County Sheriff's Office, life in Wyoming, and the Criminal Justice/Emergency Response field. I am a believer that all elected officials should be transparent and open with the communities they serve, and this blog aims to help accomplish that goal!

I am always open to suggestions, and if you have any topics you would like to see covered, please reach out!

Our first article is titled "Get to know your Carbon County Sheriff," and was first published in the Carbon County Comet Newspaper.

I hope you enjoy!

-Alex

As many of our community members are aware, I am (sadly) not a born and raised Wyoming-ite. Instead, I was born in a small town in northern Minnesota, near the western tip of Lake Superior. After graduating high school, I spent two years studying Physical Therapy and playing football at the College of Saint Scholastica (Duluth, MN) before transferring to the University of Wisconsin-Superior (UWS) to study Criminal Justice-Legal Studies. I was eventually lucky enough to graduate from UWS Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in Legal Studies and a Concentration in Criminal Justice.

After graduation, I worked as a Juvenile Probation Officer (Arrowhead Regional Corrections,) and an Operator at a ceiling tile/sheetrock mill.

Growing up, most of my free time was spent fishing for walleye and bowhunting for whitetail in the timbered forests of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. In fact, one of my motivations for transferring to a Wisconsin college was that it allowed me to purchase deer tags as a resident in both Minnesota and Wisconsin (of course I always placed academics before hunting...)

In the fall after college graduation, I drove out to Colorado to spend a week bowhunting elk on a public land, over the counter tag. I was immediately captivated by the wide-open spaces, the rugged mountains, and of course, the hunting. Immediately after returning to Minnesota, I started applying for jobs all over the western United States: Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, etc. The first job offer I received was from the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins. I immediately accepted the offer and loaded up all my earthly possessions in a U-Haul Trailer and my Ford F-150. It didn’t matter to me that I had never been to Wyoming, or that I didn’t know anyone in Wyoming. All that mattered was that I could buy an elk tag for $52.00. I’d figure the rest out.

After working at the Wyoming State Penitentiary several years, I eventually made the move to the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office. Starting in the jail as a Detention Deputy, I transferred to Patrol Deputy and was eventually elected Sheriff in this past year’s election.

Wyoming has been extremely good to me over the last ten years, specifically Carbon County. There’s nowhere on earth my family and I would rather be. And luckily, despite being busy as a father, a husband, and your Sheriff, I still find plenty of time to elk hunt.

Thank you for reading! As always, you can contact me with any questions. I am on Facebook at Alex Bakken-Carbon County Sheriff https://www.facebook.com/bakkenforsheriff or email at ccsheriff@carbonwy.com.

Thanks!

-Alex